Over the months of November and December 2021, the WCO Anti-Corruption & Integrity Promotion (A-CIP) Programme has closely worked with Customs administrations of Ghana, Malawi, Niger and Sierra Leone in the area of internal control. The workshops held virtually and facilitated by experts from WCO Members from Brazil, Canada, Mauritius and the United States were a response to specific capacity building needs related to their internal affairs function.
During the two virtual sessions, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has worked on the reinforcement of their corruption complaints mechanism, therefore leveraging work done in collaboration with the Ghana Transparency Initiative (GII). This joint initiative aims to encourage individuals to come forward and report corruption, but also to offer protection to those who do. Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA), on their end, has oriented their work on the critical role played by their disciplinary panels. The participants and the WCO experts have reviewed a “disciplinary panel decision-making calibration package” to ensure that the decisions rendered by these panels are consistent and fair in all cases presented to them. The Customs of Niger particularly focused on identifying the strengths and gaps of their internal control function. In his opening remarks, the Director General reminded the participants of the importance of collective action in that area, inviting them to further develop their investigation skills under the A-CIP Programme. Finally, Sierra Leone National Revenue Authority (NRA) concentrated its efforts on consolidating their administrative investigations process. In this regard, participants and WCO experts emphasized the importance of internal partnerships at the different stages of the process that would include but not be limited to senior management, human resources, legal services and internal affairs.
The WCO A-CIP Programme always promotes a collaborative approach in which the views and perspectives of the participants added to those of the WCO experts lead to concrete measures and actions that will impact the fight against corruption and the promotion of integrity. All these successful workshops will be very helpful in in building and consolidating the internal affairs virtual training curriculum.
The WCO A-CPI Programme is currently supporting more than 20 countries in five of the six WCO regions with funding from Norad and Canada.
For more information, please contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org.